. . . neglected this blog

recently, as well as art. There's a good reason for it, though. My real estate agent told me that the main selling points for my home were the back yard, garden, deck, back porch, patios; and the kitchen. So I have been spending most of my time cleaning up the outdoors. I have always taken care of the gardens, but I never had much responsibility for the yard. Yesterday I spent ALL DAY raking, mowing bagging, break up limbs and packing them up for disposal, mulching, and generally making things begin to sparkle outside. Little Joey came to help for a few hours that just flew by. . . he ran around and rode his trike and played with the neighbor kids. I'm not quite done yet: I still have to paint some wooden rocking chairs and a side table that are staples on the deck; plant some annuals in a few large pots for the deck and patio; put out a couple of hanging baskets, and just generally keep up with the maintenance on the yard. It was gratifying to get into a hot shower last night. . . it was one of those showers where you can actually see DIRT coming off your body. Next comes the indoors, making the kitchen sparkle, too, but with the weather being so nice, it's hard to stay inside. My first tree peony blossomed yesterday. . . a beautiful ruffly double pink one. . . and new things are blooming and growing all the time.


The picture above is part of a new painting I'm working on. It's hard for me to paint right now, which is another reason I'm not blogging much. . . I don't have a lot to offer an I don't want to bitch about it. I'm trying to work through whatever it is that is blocking me, so I just paint whatever. . . just putting paint on canvas, seeing what happens, hoping something good comes out.